Summer Fling

“There’s something that always sends us hurtling head over heels. Travel. Regardless of whether you’re married, dating, heartbroken or happily single, if you’re traveling, you can have that beautiful feeling of falling in love all over again, again and again.” – Revati Victor

He was able to articulate what I wanted to say, “Traveling is the closest to the feeling of falling in love. It is the feeling that you do not want to end.” If you are someone who likes romance but not so much on relationships, traveling is your best companion. Every place you go is like a summer fling. You get so excited at first and heartbroken once it leaves you too swift. But right now, I want an endless summer fling. I want to keep my feet moving until I reach a new destination. Traveling is ephemeral. The value of fleeting moments becomes more apparent in traveling. Nothing lasts forever. Every moment is fleeting. Everyone is leaving. Everything is depleting. We don’t know the extinction of every bird, and every plant. We don’t how long we can swim the seawater.

Traveling is ephemeral. So take a camera with you

I just realize how wonderful God made the world and I realized I have not seen half of it. I want to do stargazing in the woods, and write in my journal Pablo’s Neruda’s famous lines “Tonight I can write the saddest lines.” I can never measure the words infinity, abundance, grandeur, borderless, and unlimited but when I travel, it is the only time that these words have real meaning. When I walk near the sea, I see infinity. When I reach the mountain tops, I stand in awe. When I reach a foreign land, there is just too much to absorb. When I get to know people and culture, there is just too much to learn. You will always use the word “too much.” I also want to see the works of people all over the world including handicrafts, paintings, and old and modern architecture.

SingaporeChatuchak Market

We appreciate history. We appreciate stories if we see their remnants in monuments, in artifacts, in museums, in tradition, and in places. While books can tell you when and why, traveling reaffirms what we know about the world and makes us discover what we haven’t known for a long time.

CaviteCorregidor

When life is just too dry, I dream of cherry-blossoms, maple trees, and long bridges. I want to touch snow, see Taj Mahal, climb Mt Pulag, and maybe get a tattoo from Kalinga. I want to ride a bike with basket of flowers and pretend I’m in a Korean film. Traveling makes life look like movies. I want to travel as often as I can, partly because I want to escape the truth that some things have to be permanent. As what most people say “walang forever” (there is no forever). But there is always a feeling of forever, maybe in small infinities or in bigger infinities.

I only have two dreams: To go as many places as I can and to eat many kinds of food. The rest is negotiable.